The city of Houston is enforcing a permit belonging to the Energy Day festival being held this weekend at Hermann Square Plaza in front of City Hall. At 7:00am on Friday October 14, 2011 representatives from the Houston Police Department will evict those of us still occupying the plaza. We are moving our base camp to protect our supplies including our members’ personal property and all of the goods that have been generously contributed to us. Those of us who wish to stay at Hermann Square Plaza may do so as long as they are aware of the potential legal consequences. We’ll have staff on hand to assist you and more support available for you at our base camp across the street along the southwest corner of Tranquility Park should the need arise.

A reminder for those staying at Tranquility Park: if you’d rather save your energy, we have a silent protest planned for the Energy Day festival this coming Saturday. Be there, and lets show our numbers to Big Oil! The corner of Tranquility Park that we are occupying does not conflict with the clean energy portion of the festival. We believe in safe and responsible energy! Come find us at Tranquility Park and occupy in solidarity with us and the rest of the 99%!

Tranquility Park is located on the corner of Bagby St. and Walker St. on the west side of downtown Houston, just north of City Hall and right next to Houston’s theatre district. If you’re coming from the north, take the McKinney St. exit from I-45 south to get into downtown and turn left at Bagby St.

There is usually ample parking at the underground City Hall and Theatre District parking. Entrances to the parking garage are on Rusk St., Capitol St., and the southwest corner of Bagby St. And Walker St. Prices are $3/hour with a $12/day maximum.

The park is within easy access of two METRO stations at Bagby St. and Walker St. (1, 2).

The MetroRail will stop running Friday night at 9PM due to construction in the Medical Center. Please be advised, and change your travel itinerary as needed. The MetroRail will not be running Saturday or Sunday. As usual most metered parking downtown is free after 6PM Saturday and all day Sunday.

Members of Occupy Houston will rally in silent protest at Energy Day on Saturday October 15, 2011.

Energy Day is sponsored the big oil companies responsible for the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and for building the Keystone XL Pipeline, a potential serious environmental disaster running from Alberta, Canada right into our backyard! Valero and other oil refining companies are seeking a tax refund to the tune of $135million to cover the cost of hydrotreating equipment to reduce pollution. This refund is coming from our property taxes. Money meant for schools may go to large oil companies to cover these costs! We need to educate festival goers that there are serious threats to our planet, local tax money wasted, and a serious corruption chain behind big oil!

We will march the perimeter of the festival in white shirts and red bandannas or $1 bills over our mouths. Why do we cover our mouths? Why are we silent? Because the 99% of the citizens in this country do not have a voice in this country! Why do we wear white? It’s the opposite of black, the color of oil, and a symbol of the corruption and collusion rampant in the big energy industry.

Meet at 12:00 noon on Saturday, October 15, 2011 at lower Tranquility Park. Show up in your white shirts, bandannas, and bring a $1 bill. After we gather ourselves, get organized, and settled, we march at 12:30pm one block south to Hermann Square Plaza, right outside City Hall. It’s all-right if you don’t show up in a white shirt. We’ll have you covered.

We’d also like to make a call for contributions of white shirts and red bandannas to make sure everyone is ready to go! If you want to paint “99%” on your shirt then please use Krylon indoor/outdoor gloss spray paint, banner red color. We’ve found that shows up best when applied to cotton t-shirts. We need volunteers to stand at the beginning and end of our line to hand out leaflets that educate interested festival goers.

Some of the companies at Energy Day are environmentally conscious. In addition to exposing the facts behind big oil our leaflets direct people to the companies present at the festival who do consider our environment and offer safe, renewable sources of energy.

Stand with us, Houston! Let’s make a showing and get the word out! We’ll see you on Saturday!

About Thinkwing Radio

Mike Honig is originally from Brooklyn, New York. He moved to Houston in September of 1977 and has been there ever since. Mike's interests are politics, history, science, science fiction (and reading generally), technology, and almost anything else. Mike has knowledge and experience in many diverse fields, sometimes from having worked in them, and sometimes from extensive reading or discussion about them. Mike's general knowledge makes him a favorite partner in Trivial Pursuit. He likes to say that about most things, he knows enough to be dangerous. Humility is a work-in-progress.